That is love...#poetry

When you aren't afraid

to have unshakable belief in yourself

that is love

 

When you aren't ashamed to adorn your style, your personalities

Even if they are unusual, old-fashioned

that is love

 

When you embrace both your sorrows and joys

your collection of hurts, your boxes of thoughts

with gentle hands

that is love

 

When you find yourself jostled and falling into a dark place

And still know, that all you need to bounce back

is to sit by yourself and sip a cup of coffee

that is love

 

When you can listen to the symphonies of your heart

and trust them to decide the rhythm and the melody of your life

that is love

 

At nights, when you gaze up at the stars

And see your name written in their glitter

that is love

 

When you dive into the ocean of yourself

and discover something that won't abandon you ever

that wwould stand by you for ever and ever

that is love

 

When you spend endless hours

programming deprogramming your mind, like a cosmic engineer

Because you will always choose the best for yourself

that is love

 

When life hurts you, or people

and you decide to walk away, because you understand that you can only love people, you can't save them

that iis love

 

When times get tough and situations harsh

but you keep going, you don't quit

because you know your greatness

that is love

 

When it gets too noisy and swarms of  echoes invade your peace

when ghosts of people from your past try to disrupt your innate joy

and you continue to look within your heart

shining your light

that is love

 

When you set yourself absolutely free, let your crazy, poetic self just be

when you aren't scared to dance like nobody's watching

that is love

 

When shadows tap on your shoulders trying to stop you

and you look in their face, smile and keep walking

that is love

 

When you aren't afraid to be afraid

yet you dwell in fearlessness

that is love

 

When you know that your mind can make you sick

and still have faith in the power and wisdom of your heart

that is love

 

When you invite your fears, your griefs, your worries and shames and pains

and cradle them and kiss their tears

not shoo them away

that is love

 

When the pages of your notebooks rumble and burst with the bizarre stories and fantasies of your creepy life

and yyou let them be

 Without trying to change them

that is love

 

When you aren't shy to seek out those you can share your life with, those you can cuddle or laugh with

and still understand that if there's a place where love springs from

its oonly and only your own heart

that is love

 

This, the one that you see in the mirror

that is love

 

you, my friend

is love

yes you....love

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This life....Happy New Year Song #poetry

This life, is a dream

A dream within a dream within a dream

A fleeting glimpse of the rainbow we call as “our world”

 

This life, is a labyrinth

A labyrinth spun intricately with stories

Stories we tell ourselves, stories we hear from others

Stories we believe in, stories we refuse to believe

 

This life, is a puzzle

Piece after piece after piece

we assemble it in time

only to watch them scatter again

 

This life, is a song

A meticulous composition of rhythms and sounds

A bittersweet symphony of pleasures and pains

Woo! Wheesh! Pff! Huh! Ummm! No! Yoohoo! Yay! Oh no!

 

This life, is an overcoming

Overcoming of yourself

Of who you thought you were, of what you thought you needed

 

This life, is also letting go

Letting go of what’s already gone

Letting go of what pulls you away from what is

 

This life, is also a becoming

The becoming of who you already are

The becoming of who you are designed to be

 

This life, is a process

The process of rise and fall

The process of high and low

 

This life, is a book

The big book of years

Years come, years go

But in the end, they leave

Stories, stories of horror and stories of romance

Stories of tragedy and stories of mystery

 

This life, is a dream

And as this year comes to a close

Make sure you recycle your old dream

And create new ones

It’s the time to slow down, to reflect, and release

So you can start anew, with a new dream, a greater dream

 

Because, even though life is a dream

A dream within a dream within a dream

You are the one who choose what to dream

This life, is a dream

But what a dream!

 

Happy New Year! 

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Reach somewhere beyond which there's nothing...

Wherever you are, 
keep on going farther
until you reach somewhere
beyond which there is nothing.

Superstar Billionaire | Poem by Neha's Notebook

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Oh I want it so bad

I want it more than

All the things I ever had

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And be on the cover of Forbes and Fortune magazines

Dressed in Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Nike

Looking like a queen

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Richer than Bill Gates and prettier than Disney princesses

I wanna do and be everything, all that I can be

I don’t wanna anything to miss

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And be in love sweeter than Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Silk

I wanna distribute to all the people Dark Fantasy’s choco chips

With glasses of coffee and milk

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And have the caramel voice of Dua Lipa and the intensity of Rihanna and Beyonce

I wanna dress in glittery leotards

And dance on the stage one day

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Fresher than Patanjali, Brighter than diamonds of Tiffany’s

I wanna learn all the languages

From Malyalam to Greek and Japanese

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And write books like JK Rowling

With passion spicier than Lays blue chips

I wanna get my words scribbled in typewriter inks

 

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Ride horses, play saxophone and guitar

I wanna be chased by paparazzi

And shine like the Sirius star

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And make my own library

Read billions of books

And write like Ray Bradbury

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Oh I want it so bad, I have always been

I wanna shake hands with people

Like Blake Lively, Steve Jobs, and Albert Einstein

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And be on the silver screen

Sparkly golds and reds and purples

I wanna write a script, and prestigious Oscars win

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And make everyone the happiest

I wanna see everybody

Living to their fullest, and best

 

I wanna be superstar billionaire

And design a robot with Elon Musk

I wanna meet the President

And share my opinions on how the world works

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

And wanna make my mom-pop proud

I wanna be like Apple and Dove

Always have famous people around

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Oh I want it so bad

But if God has other plans for me

I will be happy, even though a little sad

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire

Oh I want it so bad

I want it more than

All the things I ever had

 

I wanna be a superstar billionaire….

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Lose Yourself | Poem by Neha's Notebook

As I tread through the field of silence

Where fraids of ghosts hide in the particles of golden-silver dust

A stalk of wild green grass pops its tiny head from the field

And sneers at me, flittering its sinuous lissome body in the windstorm

Lose yourself, it whispers like a Cheshire cat mangling on the trees

 

As the windstorm slaps the field in fiery gushes

It liberates a flurry of echoes that evoke the ghosts hiding below

The stalk of grass bends in the wind and paints a sinister grin in the greying sky

I shiver with fear, for I need to cross this field to reach home

Lose yourself, the ghosts murmur in my sweaty ears, their creepy undertones sending chilling vibrations down my spine

 

Standing at the portal of this field of silence

I am all alone, there is nobody here except for me

And some crackles of eldritch thunder erupting in the darkening sky

No sign of a creature’s breath, just an endless expanse of entities of death

Lose yourself, they say in hushed tones, hovering around my ears

 

Day ends in the night, night ends in the day

I remain where I was, not moving even a single step

Too afraid, of the ghostly voices swirling all around me

Lose yourself, lose yourself, they repeat to me

 

Exhausted and miserable, I surrender myself into the cocoon of the dark night, I fall asleep

All of a sudden something happened that I never expected

The stalks of spooky grass bent themselves to cover me in a warm blanket

The tiny ghosts in the dust bringing food for me

Corn, flowers, fruits, herbs, grains, and some spice seeds

Teary-eyed, I wake up to eat

Feeling love for the ghosts that once frightened me

Lose yourself, I tell myself, as the tiny entities gather around to watch me eat

 

A new day rises from the field, beams of golden sun sparkling on my skin

I stand up with a renewed strength

Only to find the tiny fleet of ghosts collected around me in heaps

The bright sun burned them into mounds of ash

Why this had to happen at the moment just when I found friends in these ghosts, I wonder

Why does nothing stay forever, I think

I weep and weep, even the stalk of the green grass now stands still

Lose yourself, Lose yourself, Lose yourself, the sunshine tells me as I feel the pain of losing my friends

 

I ran and ran, I ran through the field of silence with the speed of the winds

I ran and ran and reached my home, only to find myself weeping even more

I open my scrapbook and paint a stalk of grass, the whispering ghosts and a gash of watery wind

On another page, I paint another stalk of grass, I keep on painting, never to pause

Why does nothing last?

I paint and paint, I paint for evermore

Losing myself at last

In something that makes me forget to snore

 

Lose yourself, lose yourself,

Lose yourself in something somewhere

Feel the pain, feel the pain

But lose yourself in something somewhere

Be a monk, a magician, a wild animal, an elf

Just find something worth losing yourself

Find something worth losing yourself

Lose yourself

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Never give up on love, Never give up on life | Poem by Neha's Notebook

I may spend my life in picking up the sticks you throw at me

I may spend every moment of my life drenched in inner strife

I will take all your pain and give you all my smiles

But I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

I will cross the oceans and climb mountains to bring you joy

I will do all that you desire to be happy, I will even sacrifice

I will witness you laugh and roll and dance in ebullience

Being the gatekeeper, I will pay all the hurtful price

But I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

I will dance in the rain and make you dance with me

I will fill your life with yellows and purples of harmony

I will fill the cracks and voids that life may have left in your heart

I will become a crease in the mist, so sunlight will reach you through me

But I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

I will pedal to the metal, I will knead my knuckles in the dirt

If you need me to change your destiny, your happiness is my purpose

I will not question, not ask you a bit

I will hustle and toil until I awaken love in your heart

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

You may wonder, that I am silly, unwise, or dumb

But the pain in your heart has taught me

To be always optimistic, to never give up

So I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

Even though you may thrash my heart like a pulp beneath your feet

You may throw bricks at my castle, or splash my face in dust

But I will stand up over and over again, looking at you with hope

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

You may be hurt, you may be in pain or shame or rage

You may be struggling yourself in labyrinths of turmoil

I will not add to your plight, I will bow down, not fight

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

 

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

I will never give up on love, I will never give up on life

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Guardian of the Galaxy | Poem by Neha's Notebook

Standing at the crossroads of the world’s puzzling mindscape

I am a geometrical being, the colorful figure of poetry & art

My soul intertwined with that of the universe; my heartbeats aligned

I am the guardian of the galaxy, I govern hearts

 

When the banshees of fear wailed upon my head

Calling my attention to the plights of life

I floundered in my faith, but I kept going, knowing that

I am the guardian of the galaxy, I resolve strife

 

Other times when the bitter trees of rage and wrath

Enveloped me in their claustrophobic venomous tendrils

I choked, I fought, I let the trees throttle my throat

I, the guardian of the galaxy, surrendered, I didn’t even trill

 

But then I caught spark of a flame

A majestic treecutter had set ablaze the venomous tree

As the tree struggled to survive, I struggled to breathe in its grip

Out of the sooty rubbly ash, I rose, the guardian of the galaxy set free

 

I stand nonchalant amidst the hiccups and glitches

In case you’re wondering, then yes, I will take it all upon me

Mercies, melancholies, and murmurs of despise; my battle is with everyone I have ever encountered, but the greatest battle of myself is with me

‘cause I am the guardian of the galaxy, ferocious I ought to be

 

I am always holding the sky on my shoulders

I am never bereft of rumpus and fight

Its tough to be a guardian of the galaxy, and painful

But that’s what brings me the most delight

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Boulevard of Broken Hearts | Poem by Neha's Notebook

 

A teardrop trickles down my eyelash

And adds a trail of glisten on my cheek

As I remember the way we used to be

Enchanting paradise, unlike this moment bleak

Never did I think

That one day we would be apart

That one day, we will spend our days

Living in the boulevard of broken hearts

 

I have loved the season of rain all my life

But never did I think, one day it’d be the rain of tears

My body grew into an adult, and I changed

But I never knew the change could mean burying our love under medleys of shames and fears

Day after day, the heartbreak turned us into frozen mannequins

The crusty pieces of which, keep on collapsing and falling apart

Making me recall over and over

That I am living in the boulevard of broken hearts

 

All that remains of a primal fantasy

Is a droplet of cold, empty darkness

I cannot even comprehend where did the gravity vanish

And how we ended up in such a mess

How we vanquished our own flames

And landed in buggies loaded with dustcarts

Why did we never question

That why are we living in the boulevard of broken hearts

 

Often times as I shuffle through

My old boxes of pintucks, crayons, and paper clips

A fond memory emerges from the velvet casket

A crumpled paper scrap reminds me how you used to scribble funny poems about my rosebud lips

How you recited the poetry of Tagore and Rumi

into my sweet slumberous sleep

And how Amazon’s CEO

gifted us dozens of jewelry boxes after we saved his rainforest jeep

But soon after the twilight, a wizard stole our light

And we became living lifeless pieces of plastic art

Our wells of ebullience and passion leeched barren

And our land discolored into the ashy boulevard of broken hearts

 

Tethered like strangled beasts

We waddle and trod angrily inside buckets of human skin

There seems no ray of light in the dark

Unless we find a way, or a djinn

Gone are the days of laughing under starry nights

Now, we are just piecharts of heartbreak from finish to start

Lest we find each other once again

Which seems impossible in the boulevard of broken hearts

 

Maybe that’s the way life is supposed to be sweetheart

 

Maybe we are all supposed to spend our lives

Living in separation inside this boulevard of broken hearts

Or maybe there is a way, no one knows

Of becoming alive and healing the boulevard of broken hearts

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The Christmas Song 🎄🌠🎅 | Poem by Neha's Notebook

Mind my absence but I was too busy

Loading Santa’s bags with gifts and goodies

Fleets of Rolls Royce and Ferraris

And zillions of glittery green tinsel trees

In one bag, I tossed dozens of Cheetos and chips

Not to forget freshly grated blocks of mozzarella cheese

 

For girls I added velvet boxes of Tiffany’s bracelets,

Bangles, earrings, and diamond rings

Don’t tell the dentist but I also packed

Hoards of candies, cookies, and chocolatey things

Bouquets of fresh flowers are also there

For those who wish to have an early spring

 

In case you’re wondering what will happen

To your thighs when you eat all these fries and sweets

Let me tell you that this year Santa will also bring

Treadmills and dumbbells for Gen Alpha and Gen Zees

But as far as the Christmas cake is concerned

Don’t skip it I beg you please

 

Then I couldn’t stop myself from placing

A casket of emotions and a book of John Keats poetry in Santa’s buggy

Calling out all those who like to have

Love-filled Christmas evenings huggy huggy

Logs to light the fireplace and ornaments clinking and jangling

With all these presents, I hope you won’t act snobbish or sluggy

 

Lastly what’s most astonishing is Santa’s last sack

is not a Rolls Royce, a box of choco-chip cookies or some antique thrift

Instead within this giant sparkly purple pouch

I hopped and placed myself as Santa’s gift

This sack is for the lucky one who wished for me upon a Christmas candle

I am curious to see the look on their face when they notice this twist!

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Love Arrives | Poem by Neha's Notebook #poetry

Love arrives

in glory

Wearing garbs of intense heartbreak

It looks into your eyes

And brushes your hair with a smile

“Don’t worry,” it says, “I’ll take care of you”

“Don’t be afraid of the dark,” “it’s just a color” it tells you.

With its fingertips

Love touches you

In places you never knew existed within you

With its ambrosial embrace

It soothes you

With the spark of its fire

It molds you into gold

And then when its time is over

Love whispers goodbye

Leaving souvenirs in your heart

That’ll guide you

Till eternity

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Moment of Change | Poem by Neha's Notebook

 

Life flits past us

In a moment of change

Often too quick

That we can’t hold its entire range

 

Of sadness, grief, wrath, rage

Shapeshifting holograms appear disappear

There is sometimes ecstasy and bliss

Not to forget the leery voice of fear

 

A melancholous sorrow wails before us

While a resplendent release awaits with open arms

The darkness still tugs upon our shoulders

Dangling like clinking bracelet charms

 

All the while the old telephones go haywire with dissonance

The sunlit lakes draw us in intoxicating gravity of silence

Flamebulbs of tranquilizing energies swirl within

Mollifying the shadows into charcoal cleanse

 

A moment of change arrives at our doorstep

Carrying buggies of words dressed in emoticons

We may resist, at first, but eventually

We learn to let go and move on

 

The journey doesn’t come to an end

Though stories do culminate

Teardrops slather the loose-leaf pages

As we flip through, fearful of their fate

 

The moment of change never dies

It comes again and again in smithers and smithers

Like a half-asleep wild beast

Whose restless legs wriggle and slither

Moments of change rub the sandpapers of our hearts

It hurts, but they galvanize our soul

Phoenixes after all are stories, they aren’t born until stories are thrown

In fiery infernos that stick out their lolling tongues and burn them away all

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Breaking Dawn | Poem by Neha's Notebook

From the welkins of breaking dawn

Light emerges through the cracks

Golden emollient bursting through the crevices

Bangles of dazzling color in nature’s lac

 

As the dazed passion of morn girdles round me

In the vertigo of ecstasy, I stay afloat

Unfettered become all the shackles and pinions

Pintucked to my trembling boat

 

Falling from the azure ocean of sky

Diamond droplets of dew plunge into the peachy pool of my flesh

Bring back recollections of a memory

A sea of burning persimmons and reds, blazing fresh

 

I thought I died in winter

But this memory makes me rethink

Of all the twilights when you set me alight

Inside the fiery cauldron of your gaze, without blink

 

When I lay slumped in the dead slumber

In teppenwitz graves of my mini-deaths

You loved me back to life

Awakening catacombs with the warm gust of your breath

 

It would be unjustness if I deny

The glory of this breaking dawn that reminds me

Of all the flowers you tickled on my skin

I tingled with aliveness and then danced free

 

Unmatchable is the beauty of this dawn

That tells the story of me and you

Of squirrels circling their palindromes

Of lazy bears guffawing with their crew

I’ve not forgotten

That this breaking dawn will eventually set to dusk

My quill will stop pursuing the paper

And dance of inks will contract into a silent husk

 

But then I will become the lake

And you’ll dance like the moonglade, will you not

Together we will encrust the orange sunsets

With another memory in the perfervid wake, we got

 

In the clefts of the darkening skies, we shall write

Lores of dead paintings that wept

And fables of sparrows and hummingbirds

That could not return to their nests

 

But when the world is set ablaze in the orange potion of light

This moment is not however what the breaking dawn will prevail

As I will bath in music clinging to the glittering silhouette of you

The breaking dawn will slowly burn this memory away, stealing my nightly veil

 

Yet the breaking dawn will forever sing

Sonnets of darkness and elegies of memories

I will once again put my pen to the papers

And scribble down the story of two lonely trees

 

Some quintessential words will trudge along the notebook edges

Some will cut their way past my thoughts and slip away

But as long as there is breaking dawn

I will immortalize you my love, I will write away

In the heart of this breaking dawn, your memory will forever sway  

 

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Choose Your Words Wisely | Podcast #29 by Neha's Notebook | Poetry

A word is a door. Behind each word is a world, one beautiful than the other, full of magic, miracles, charm and wonder. As a word is uttered, it opens a door in the space of the mind, and this door leads to a land full of possibilities. Sometimes it leads to a painful moment of the past while sometimes, it opens into a wonderland of future.

The human mind is a container of zillions of such words, each locked in their little-little caskets, jingling like crystals, and producing the music of assorted thoughts. When one of these little containers is stirred or triggered with our attention, it crackles open into another world, a new world is spun for us to witness, feel and experience. Sometimes a memory, sometimes a song, a book, a fantasy, a dream.

Words are also malleable goldlike constellations shimmering in the galaxy of our minds, waiting to shapeshift into a new form. Words are treasure, each one similar to a gemstone, a bead, a pearl, a jewel. Like treasures and jewels, words can embellish, adorn, colour and decorate our minds.

Words are catalysts and accelerators for our transformation too. Sometime they can lead us to open the door of a fresh perspective, a positive growth mindset, a healing emotion, or likewise.

A word is an image. Each image corresponds to some of our memory or experience. Therefore, each word is a doorway into the past and future, into both the land of gold and the land of ghosts. A word can turn out to be an arrow or a mesmerising flower, a flavour or a majestic tower.

Words can hurt and words can heal. Words can come out of anger or words can come out of love.

So, choose your words wisely.

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A Sweet Love Note About Life! | Neha's Notebook

Upon capturing a billion years of crazy experience in my notebooks, I am writing this sweet love note to you. I have not written it before because I have been wondering if you would even read it. It’d be useless to me if you wouldn’t ever read this note. I am writing this only and only for you after all. But at last I gathered enough insanity to express my heart out, and in case you too feel the same in your heart, you’ll surely like reading my thoughts. So let me begin by telling you how I have been feeling lately. Lately, I have been feeling that I am living in a video game, as if I am a character in some video game. I am constantly chasing some goal or milestone. But sometimes I also allow myself to relax, destress and just enjoy my life. For instance, by having a cup of hot coffee, by eating a chocolate, by taking a long walk in the park, by dancing and listening to music, by doing some fun activity that I used to do when I was not this old and grown up, activities like coloring, art journal, doodling and writing poetry.

During the evenings, while I am relishing the roaring orange-crimson sunset, I often feel like I am in love. As if I want to tell somebody I love the most that I like it when I catch them looking at me. And whoever, whatever I am, in this moment, I am completely theirs to own. I am saying this because I think that someone is not a true lover unless they are a lover forever and all the time. And therefore, I aspire to be in love all the time throughout my life, just like these pretty sunsets and like the poetry of Rumi and like the paintings of Van Gogh and like the tunes of Beethoven and like the lyrics of Gulzar. I feel it all nowadays, to tell you the truth. But most of the time I have been too scared to write to you all this. Once upon a time, I even wrote a letter to you but I ended up putting it in a glass bottle and letting a river float it away wherever it would. That kind of a person I have been, most of the time in my life. It is only now that I am learning to be fearless enough to tell you about my feelings.

Feelings and emotions are beautiful. The giftbox of feelings and emotions makes our life colourful. But so far so long, I have also learned that although we should embrace our feelings but we shouldn’t let these feelings drive our actions and habits. While we remain encapsulated with everyday mortal coils and the webs of humanly conflicts, we should carry the mountain of reason and understanding with us whereever we go, no matter how uncomfortable or restricting it may feel to us. Because my feelings mostly tell me that I don’t want to get up from my sleep in the cosy blanket, and I don’t want to eat healthy foods and I don’t want to go to the park, and all. So, that’s the reason I think reason is important too.

At the same time, you know, reason is not at all about practicality. I see that people talk about practicality all the time, but I have learned that practicality is often a disguise for extreme boredom. As we pop out of the toaster of life and become an adult, we stop believing in things like excitement, fun, and wonderful dreams that appear unrealistic. The idea of practicality is practically taught to us so we become too less practical actually. But I have also learned that we should embrace our boredom when it strikes, and also the feelings of blankness we feel when we feel like grieving about something. If you think about it, you will agree with me that life is full of grief. Grief over what someone said to us, all the words that hurt us, and all the disappointments and failures and heartbreaks we could never get over with.

Another thing I wanted to tell you in this note is that I feel that life is utterly, magnanimously, flamboyantly beautiful. Just look at all these birds flying from their nests towards the sky, the green-green leaves rustling and swinging merrily with the breeze, the trees standing tall and proud, the soil and mud smudged on playing kids’ dresses, the glitter dripping from the nightsky, the luminous gold outpouring from the sunshine, the blend of aromas scurrying from the hot kitchens, the smell of the fresh polish, the laughters on the faces of the loved ones, and all things like that.

To tell you the truth, I totally get it what Helen Keller said in this quote of hers, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” That’s true, dear friend.

Apart from these ponderings about feelings and emotions, I have been lately feeling an extreme love for words. Words, words, so many words! Call me a logophile, if you think. Words, to me, are like crystals and diamonds and sequins and gems and trinkets that I use to embellish and decorate my writing. Like favourite foods, words seem to endow me with utter pleasure.

By saying this, what I really wanted to tell you is that if you are crazy about something in your life, then by all means chase this craziness. Just like I am crazy about feelings and words and foods, you too must be crazy about something. So, I want to tell you that just keep being crazy. Do not ever let your craziness go away just because someone tells you that it’s bad or improper to be crazy. Do not put salt on your own wounds, my friend. Keep being crazy, and keep being in love. I will now end my note with this message, and promise you that I will write more love notes like this, for you. Do tell me if you liked it. And should you want to tell me about something you feel, do not hesitate to write a sweet love note for me. Writing that will make you feel good too, trust me!

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The Meaning of Life | Podcast #25 by Neha's Notebook

Life is only as meaningful as it is meaningless.

We laugh, we cry.

Storing our own potions of happiness in our hearts,

Blinking only when a warm salty tear rolls down our cheeks to make us pause and reflect,

What this is really all about?

A game, a dream, a delusion

But if it is an illusion, no one can deny that it is such a magnetic illusion

This world,

It gravitates our emotions towards itself

Its glitz and glamour,

Still, there is a glitch scurrying in this glitz

The scent of which,

Pours through our body and mind,

Like glittery molecules of chemicals streaming and swirling around in our bloodstream,

Making us feel happy, hungry, melancholic or puzzled.

The glitch is our shadow.

We live amongst shadows and walk among shadows.

Shadows, who are squirreled in the deepest recesses of our mind and who sleepwalk their way through life, 

Thinking "only if"...

So prefer not be a shadow.

Choose to be a sparkling ball of starlight.

Choose to be happy.

Smiles are in fashion, but happiness is rare.

Therefore, be the rare one. 

Like unread fiction books inviting you to give them a read, your mind calls you to reflect upon it.

There are mirrors all around who showcase for us what we need to pay attention to, the most, 

Only if we're willing to see through the illusion.

People are always supporting us even when they appear to be doing otherwise. 

Yet amidst this dreamworld, there are moments of comfort…

The chirping of blue-brown birds.

Flaring bonfires.

Clinking and clanking of utensils in the kitchen.

Numbing wintery cold freezing everything as if a chunk of the glacial ice.

Hot summer afternoons and books of notes and chronicles.

Cups of coffee and tables of breads and biscuits. 

A solace to cherish! 

There are bunkums of noise outside,

But there's also a center of stillness inside.

Arrive at this center and be restful. 

Herein sits the poetry of love.

Like a pearl in an oyster, 

An oyster, like which, we humans live layered with labyrinths of mysteries…

Mysteries, the clues to whose solutions, are there in front of our eyes but we lie to ourselves in order to believe that they are not true.

Perhaps because we think we won't be able to bear the reality if we believed that they are really true.

Unlike a geometry theorem in mathematics, any insight about life cannot really be deducted to ‘Hence, proved.’

Because life always challenges our notions and what we know about it from our intellect and experience.

The sole meaning of life is to live it.

Beauty and love and colors. The search for the truth. And should life have another meaning, apart from being lived, then there is a treasure waiting for us at the end of the rainbow of emotions.

So, never give up.

The meaning of life is to live and to never give up on this living.

Talking about the meaning of life, the Pulitzer-prize winning author Annie Dillard says, “We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.”

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Be Alive! - The Story of the Black Hole | Podcast #17 by Neha's Notebook

Once upon a time there was a gigantic black hole in the cosmic wild. The black hole knew the address of an aperture to another universe, a passageway to the Wonderland. But there was no one who the black hole could tell this address to, because whatever came near the black hole got ripped apart to particles and lost forever. The black hole could form no friendships, could not let anyone come near it. A star came near it, it got lost. A planet came near it, it got lost.

Over time, the black hole became sad and embarrassed about its own gravitational power. As the sadness grew more and more, it caused stirrings in the heart of the black hole. The sadness started drawing portraits of anguish with black crayons, the wax of which was dripping with sorrow and grief, grief over an invisible feeling, a feeling of missing something, missing someone who could last forever till its lifetime. The black hole after all could hold on to nothing due to its endless deep dark abyss.

The sadness of the black hole dreamed of a yellow golden sunlit land with sparkle-shooting butterflies and glittering green grasses but each time it opened its eyes, all it could see was only black darkness.

Then the sadness cried a tear which created a sea. Marrying the rolling waves, the sadness got lost and dissolved into the black hole. The portraits of anguish that the sadness had created now spewed hot black tar and lava. If a human could see this lava spewing from the mouth of the black hole, they would imagine lots of black ink smudging a novel, a novel telling the black fiction of slaughterhouses, wrath and wildfires. But since it was a black hole, no one was there to witness this black lava spewing inside the black hole. So, the lava exhaled black gas and like a thought, got lost and dissolved back into the black hole. Whatever was created inside a black hole also got dissolved into the black hole. What happened inside the black hole remained in the black hole.

With nothing to communicate its feelings, the black hole felt lonely. Snaking through the passes of thoughts and emotions, the black hole wrote poems, crafted chunky art journals and painted flowers. Leaping and hopping like frogs, waving like boatflags, it moved around the Milky Way galaxy trying to find a place to stay.

It finally chose the center point of the galaxy as its home. From the center of the Milky Way galaxy, it looked down upon a blue-green ball. On this blue-green ball were many jelly-like dolls moving hither-tither and casting a mumbo-jumbo throughout the space of the ball.

In tiny mudhouses, tiny coffeecups clinked and clanked. Tiny tinkle bells jingled and jangled. There were tree symbols in the landscapes. There were tiny dream books in which there were the stories of jinx and magic stars and fantasy. Stories were getting penned over open lunch boxes and tiny-tiny stairs, tiny dolls sitting with their tiny doll friends. As the black hole listened with its high frequency ears, the tiny dolls were talking about a black hole which resided at the center of the galaxy. Hearing which, the black hole became wonderstruck. These tiny jelly-dolls were all talking about it. The black hole became happy and with utter happiness it ballooned into an even more gigantic size. Wanting to tell the dolls on the blue-green ball that it was feeling alive despite its gravitation.

So, if some days you feel like a black hole, never be embarrassed of your powers. Never be embarrassed of being alive. Being alive means continuous change and movement and evolution. Being alive means not holding onto anything. Being alive means not saving your feelings for the future.

Don’t save cakes and joy and love and laughter for special occasions, joy which arrives so subtly, like the murmuration of stars and like the warm glow of galaxies.

And remember that the most serious and exquisite things in the world are those that can be comprehended and grasped by a child’s heart.

So, stop being too serious. just be a child, be alive!

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THE BLACK CRAYON - Poetry & Short Story by Neha's Notebook

THE BLACK CRAYON

 

Once upon a time

there was a girl named Gold.

Her eyes like bright sapphires

her cheeks like blossoms red and bold.

 

Gold had a box of crayons.

With which she painted dusks and dawns.

Colouring mornings bright golden

with crayon yellow

and with green crayons

sketching blades of grass, soothing mellow…

 

With her box of crayons

Gold coloured the sky and the bluebells,

Lost in the sketchbook of her life

Gold carved herself a sparkling rainbow shell,

Reds of roses, and pinks of sunsets,

orange of marigolds, and creamy white of jasmines,

Oceans of emerald blues dripping from her dance

As she played with winds, fire, moon and earth’s skin

With a palette full of sparkles and colours,

She painted her laughter and playfulness

 

Until one day,

 

when she came across

a crayon

the black crayon,

 

As she picked it up,

and scrubbed it against her sketchbook’s paper,

her laughter turned to dismay,

a look of terror clawed over her face,

Sitting atop a cloud, she starting falling down

down and down into some dark alley

she shrunk and shrunk

but she kept colouring

as if a giant bucket of black paint had spilled itself

and now her fingers couldn’t stop

using this black crayon,

 

the yellow golden sky smudged into darkness

bluebells and marigolds drained of their colours

Nothing remained,

except for a gigantic dark blackness

and some slivers of white and grey spaces scattered hither-tither

 

Her joyful and playful world

had been engulfed under a giant shadow of black

Her box of crayons

nowhere to be seen or found

Everywhere she saw

there was only darkness,

a grim gloomy terrifying darkness

a cold hauntedness

there was quiet even though, but no silence

unlike in the worlds she drew with

her box of crayons…

 

Gold didn’t know what to do.

Her colourful world had shattered apart

Tears rolled down her icy white cheeks,

but the black crayon didn’t wash away

It was sticky, a wax crayon after all.

 

Gold spent days and days

weeks and months and years

crying and yelling

trying to smudge away the black crayon

from her sketchbook

and once again see the world

she had drawn with her

box of crayons…

 

but nowhere to be seen

was either her colourful world

nor her box of crayons…

 

Everywhere she saw

was only

a giant shadow

smudged everywhere around her

with black crayon

 

She slapped herself

she wailed

And regretted

why did she ever use

the black crayon…

 

But what else could she do

she didn’t know

what colour this black was…

she was an explorer

she explored all the colours

she had received

in her box of crayons…

but this one crayon

had smudged her entire world

into a blackening darkness,

a darkness she couldn’t escape from…

 

everything she drew

anything she painted

now got stained with

the colour of black…

 

She felt claustrophobic,

and immensely sad,

She wanted more than anything else

to get back her world

her vibrant playful blissful world

of colours,

her lovely box of crayons…

but all she could see

was the black crayon

which didn’t seem to finish,

only magnified and magnified

shattering every other colour

staining with black,

her box of colourful crayons…

 

She felt disgust,

She felt choked,

And shackled

 

She felt every moment

getting shrunk and shrunk

into tinier and tinier and tinier

her entire being

getting swallowed up

by the black crayon

 

She wanted to throw away

this black crayon

and free herself clean

 

But the black crayon had smudged

not only the colourful worlds in her sketchbooks

but her entire self

her hands her cheeks

every pore of her seemed to be

getting coloured by this

spooky curselike black crayon

 

She stood in front of a mirror

and shrieked a cry of horror

because now she herself

was turning bit by bit, pore by pore,

into

a black crayon.

Her teeth growing into giant pointy triangles

Her nails into pinny paws

She was getting covered from her foot to her scalp

in the colour

of the black crayon

 

She screamed

she kicked her feet

Her breath seemed to be getting choked out of her throat

 

But the black crayon

was now spiralling around her

spreading like giant branches

of a poisonous tree

wrapping rolling snaking around her

covering her pore to pore

into the colour

of the black crayon.

 

She used her will and might,

she used her power, and all her sight

but she was unable to get free,

from the serpentine grip of

this black crayon….

 

Losing her breath bit by bit,

she slumped down exhausted,

she had lost all her will,

but the memories were still

rolling down her black smudged eyes,

the memories of her colourful bright worlds

and the memory of her

box of crayons.

 

She had lost all hope

of even surviving,

let alone get back

her box of crayons….

 

Gold was not Gold anymore.

She wasn’t the same girl

as she was before.

Losing her box of crayons

she was now turning into a giant monster,

a monster, darker than the colour of black,

a monster, named as Black.

 

Her box of crayons

was now

but only

a giant black crayon,

and, Gold,

Gold was now,

Black.

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